


from the land of gods (bring me home)

by faerie_ground



Series: cherik adopt a baby telepath au [2]
Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, More In Notes, Other, Post-X-Men: Days of Future Past
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:01:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28419528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faerie_ground/pseuds/faerie_ground
Summary: A direct sequel to the first part of this series, Erik and the rest of the X-Men race against time to bring Charles home.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Series: cherik adopt a baby telepath au [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2061576
Comments: 9
Kudos: 50





	from the land of gods (bring me home)

**Author's Note:**

> tw for mentions of torture and illegal medical experimentation on children, symptoms of ptsd and a description of an experience (essex controls charles' mind) that can be seen as akin to rape or a sexual assault. any more qns feel free to drop me an ask on tumblr!

**_Charles_ **

Charles Xavier can admit as he sits across from Essex, hands cuffed to the desk, that in hindsight, this had perhaps not been one of his better ideas. 

He refuses to admit it as he controls Erik’s mind, preventing him from lashing out and making him close his eyes to the nightmare unfolding in front of him. He refuses to admit it as he gets shoved into the back of a black pickup truck, and the butt of a gun is smashed across his forehead hard enough to knock him out cold for a few hours. He refuses to admit it when he wakes up what appears to be hours later in a cold interrogation room, hands cuffed to the table in front of him, with a suppression collar rendering his mind dark and almost achingly silent. 

It had been a shock to wake up to silence, for the first time since Washington. Charles had grown once again used to and comfortable with the buzz of thoughts flitting through his head like a feedback loop, the stray impressions and emotions and feelings and thoughts of everyone around him sweeping across the back of his mind like a well-loved caress. A suppression collar isn’t enough to completely silence his power but it  _ is  _ enough to greatly dampen it, dampen it down to a weak, trembling thing shoved to the side in chains, barely breathing. He’d almost had a panic attack before forcing himself to calm down, willing his brain to calm down and relax. He’s in enemy territory now, after all. 

And now- now, seated at the table across from Essex who’s dressed in a dapper black suit and looks nothing like the man he’d met and felt attracted to outside that metal shop what now feels like centuries ago, Charles can finally admit that- yes. He’s out of his depth. 

Essex smiles. It’s a pretty attractive smile. He probably gets all the flavours of the month that way, Charles his latest conquest. “I wish it hadn’t come to this, but we did make a deal, my darling Professor.”

“My services for the school,” Charles says, tugging at the cuffs and looking around. It looks like a standard interrogation room- pale walls, a mirror to the side Charles recognises as doubling for a window, a camera in the corner. Charles wonders where he is, but doesn’t ask. He’d woken with the most frightful headache too, head lolling against the cold metal of the chair he’s on with blood seeping into the fabric of his shirt and that damned collar pressing in on the veins in his neck. “I didn’t say I’d be giving it willingly.”

“Mind games,” Essex says, sounding amused. He looks at Charles like he’s found something precious to play with, a limited edition collectors’ item.  _ Let me out,  _ Charles thinks savagely, but does not show on his face.  _ Let me out and I’ll show you what’s the sort of mind game I can play.  _ “You’re rather skilled at that, aren’t you?”

“I’m good,” Charles says simply, focusing his gaze to the left of Essex. “Done your research, have you?” 

“I really did not intend to be all that cheap, staking you out like a mission,” Essex says, somehow sounding genuinely contrite. Charles wants to punch him, right there in his smug mouth. Erik would probably approve. “I do think you are exemplary. But you must know that already, don’t you?”

“I don’t understand what you mean,” Charles retorts, and then curses at himself. It wouldn’t do to give Essex the satisfaction. Charles hadn’t grown up in the lap of Society for nothing. Sharon Xavier had taught him better than most how to turn your nose up and make everyone around you feel worthless. He’d perhaps learned that lesson better than he’d wanted, but- it’s still a valuable lesson, and not one he intends on losing anytime soon.

“You carry yourself like you know what you do to people,” Essex continues. “Even- restrained- as you are.” His eyes flick to Charles’ legs below the table and there’s no misunderstanding the implication in his words. Jesus, Charles yet again does not say. What a damn bastard. 

Their conversation in the diner had been nothing like this. None of this useless, airy flattery, Essex playing at a game Charles can’t seem to grasp. It had simply been Charles demanding Essex stay the fuck away from his school if Charles agreed to come along to wherever he was conducting his disgusting little tests, and Essex pressing a wet, sloppy kiss to his knuckles before informing him that he’d clearly underestimated the man who sat before him.

“You have a set of claws on you, Professor,” Essex had said, grinning. “Who would have thought?”

Charles hadn’t felt like he’d had claws. Charles had felt like he was shattering, the road ahead of him cut abruptly short. Charles had felt like the facsimile of a family he’d been able to create with Erik and Leo was slipping from his fingers. Charles had felt wretched, lost, alone. If this had all been for them, Charles had wondered why it felt like his own world was ending. 

And then, of course, Erik had arrived. His knight in shining armour, his brave Erik. 

“If you’re expecting me to feel flattered by you, or something as equally inane,” Charles says now, keeping his voice disinterested and flat, “you can go fuck yourself.” 

For a second, he wonders what Erik is doing. If he tries hard enough, he can still draw up the exact look of anguish on Erik’s face, how Erik had twisted his mouth in such an expression of wretchedness and anguish that he’d looked like he was being physically flayed. Charles remembers his eyes going to the sight of Charles juxtaposed against Essex, Essex’s hand around his neck, how Erik had screamed and screamed until his throat had gone raw, how Erik had continued screaming in his head when Charles had taken control of it. It doesn’t make sense, Erik shouldn’t feel so intensely about Charles getting ripped away from him but he  _ had,  _ oh he had so much that Charles doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the sight any time soon. 

Essex, for all his lack of subtlety in getting to the school, had eyes. He’d placed his hand on Charles’ neck for a reason. Anyone with half of a working brain could see, just from how Erik and Charles had treated each other on the battlefield these past few years, exactly how they regarded each other. This was theatre to him, and Charles rather suspected he envisioned himself as the lead. 

Charles had looked in the mirror in this room once, when he had first woken up. Beneath the suppression collar was a red, hand-shaped imprint, indelible and recognisable. 

“Flattered? Maybe,” Essex says, polite as sin. He links his fingers together on the table, looking like someone merely hashing out the details of a business arrangement. It’s his eyes that give him away- multi coloured like Erik’s, blues and greens mixed in an intensity that pierces Charles’ soul. “I see you, Professor. You’re so much more than what Magneto thought you to be. Powerful beyond my wildest dreams- of course you terrified him and captivated him in equal measure. Your son may have been once, too- but, well. Pity.”

Charles stares at him, and then takes deep breaths, trying his best to quell the simmering rage beneath his skin. It doesn’t work. 

“Don’t you dare,” he hisses, “don’t you  _ fucking  _ dare talk about Leo like that to me. My son is worth ten thousand of you and-”

“Relax,” Essex drawls, looking annoyed at the fervour of Charles’ retort. “We’re all professionals here, aren’t we? This is a  _ professional _ discussion, between fellow telepaths. We’re of the same kin, almost… family, you could say.” His words are polite but he’s quite obviously angry- it’s visible in the way he holds himself, the lines of his body held stiff and tense. Another toe out of line, another show of emotion to what Essex deems negligible and he’ll be laying his hands on Charles. Charles would almost welcome it.

“What a discussion we  _ telepaths  _ are having,” Charles says, finally, “with me cuffed to the fucking table like a savage, a collar around my neck.” It’s almost unavoidably digging into the handprint left by Essex, making the skin feel achy and irritable. Charles has never wanted anything gone more than he does the collar, this device of torture that cuts into his skin and into his brain. 

“Precautions have to be taken,” Essex says, smiling politely once again. “You’re a powerful man, aren’t you? Can’t have you overpowering me again.”

_ Overpowering me again.  _ Charles blinks, confused. “Again?”

“Why, Professor,” Essex laughs. His laugh isn’t horrid, or terrifying- it’s a normal, controlled sound. It does nothing but make a cube of ice slide into Charles’ stomach, making him want to shudder and shatter into pieces. 

All this time, Charles had been operating on the assumption that Essex was just interested in test subjects. He should have realised that this- this was personal. Essex had  _ manipulated  _ him, played him like a fiddle and won. Of course he’d expected Charles to give himself up for the school. 

Essex is still laughing. “You didn’t think your stunt at Washington went unnoticed?”

“You wanted  _ me,” _ Charles breathes. “This was never about the school, the students, was it?”  _ We’re of the same kin, _ Essex had said. There’s a picture forming in Charles’ head, and by god it looks terrifying.

“Hook, line and sinker!” Essex crows, clapping his hands like Charles has just arrived at a conclusion he’s been waiting for. “Oh, Professor- I know  _ everything _ about you. I know about your family. I know about your telepathy. I know about you and Lehnsherr- but then again you two are as obvious as a bag of bricks, who doesn’t? I know you froze everyone at Washington and talked Mystique down from an assassination. Charles Xavier, I know  _ everything  _ about you, and yet it has not been enough.”

Charles freezes.  _ Don’t show your hand, don’t show your hand, don’t show your h-  _ “You,” he hisses, the words falling out of his mouth against his own will. “You- I thought you wanted to get at my  _ students _ . At my son. You said so yourself!”

Essex smiles again. This time, he shows all of his teeth. Rather like Erik, except when Erik does it he looks gorgeous and beautiful, a work of art hand painted by Picasso. Essex looks like a destroyed force of nature. “Oh, Professor.  _ You _ assumed. I simply went along with it.”

The suppression collar is choking him off, making his mind as alone as it can possibly be. Of course he’d craved it when he was struggling during those years during the Vietnam war, the deaths and his students dying off one by one making him want the silence of cutting his mutation off. He doesn’t crave it now- like a resurgent wave at the shoreline he abhors it, part of his soul cut off so thoroughly he feels wrong-footed and dizzy with it, unable to place both feet on the ground properly. Even more so, because it’s-

He gasps aloud. Because his mind is no longer alone.

“No,” Charles whispers. Essex is smiling that horrible smile at him, devoid of life and sinister, so sinister Charles feels he might vomit from the sheer fear that he feels. “No, get the fuck out of my head, get  _ OUT-” _

He can’t move a muscle. He can only stay in place, hands locked, as Essex’s essence- dark, slimy, all-encompassing- steals over him like acid, keeping him into place. The smile slips off Essex’s face as his eyes grow strangely intense, stretching out a hand and brushing the hair from Charles’ forehead back behind his ear. The touch feels- wrong. 

Essex withdraws, both from across the table and from his mind. Charles’ mind is once more his own again, and he bends his head until it’s touching the cold steel of the table, gagging so roughly he imagines the surface of his vocal chords tearing apart. He pulls at the cuffs until the metal bites into his skin, a sharp pain that helps to chase the darkness within him away. 

“Interesting,” Essex breathes. “Very interesting. When you did it, I didn’t feel a thing.”

_ That’s because I’m far more powerful than you can ever hope to be, you complete twat,  _ Charles thinks. He keeps silent. He’s shown his hand far too much now. What would Sharon Xavier say? Probably turn her beautifully coiffed head and sniff, taking another gulp of her brandy.

“With just a few words, I can tell the CIA to descend on your darling little school,” Essex continues, as Charles keeps his forehead against the table. “You  _ will  _ co-operate, won’t you?”

Charles lifts his head slightly, but only just. In the wake of the mental violation he feels weakened, as if he’s holding all the molecules within his body together by sheer force of will. “What are you trying to do?” Charles croaks. He’s done with feigning disinterest. 

“ _ You _ know what it’s like,” Essex says, fingers steepled together once again. “Growing up as a telepath, seeing everyone around you treat you with suspicion more than respect. I’m just snatching power back, Professor. That’s all I’m doing.”

Essex leans forward, and this time his eyes are intent. “You and I, we’re the same,” he continues. “Doesn’t it make you sick? All the effort expounded on keeping your shields up, all the people who’ve turned you away just because you had the misfortune to be born with a power of a personal nature, all the times within the mutant community you’ve been met with distrust and suspicion and hatred?”

A chill settles into Charles’ gut, as he straightens up from the table, leaning as far back in the chair as he can possibly go. The wound in his head throbs, in tune to the racing of his heart. “I don’t- what does this have to do with anything? Anything at all?”

“You don’t see it yet, do you?” Essex asks, as if disappointed, and then shakes his head. “You said, in your thesis- you said mutants were the final stage of evolution. You were wrong, professor.”

Charles feels as if he’s processing everything five times as slow, the wound at his head throbbing even more. 

_ “We _ are the last stage of evolution,” Essex says, like it’s a big fucking revelation and not something that sounds clinically fucking insane. “Psionics. You, when you controlled an entire city of people and didn’t flinch, didn’t shudder, didn’t even recoil in exhaustion. We could be wonderful, at the head of the world.”

He extends a hand. Charles stares at it, uncomprehending. 

“Join me, professor,” he says. “Join my side, use your powers for what they were meant for and we could be gods.”

*

**_Erik_ **

Erik can’t remember anything that happens after Charles had lost his grip on his mind- not, according to Alex, breaking in the windows of the diner and frightening the poor owner and servers of the place, not screaming and falling to his knees and causing every metal related artefact in the vicinity to melt in on itself, not being bundled up into the car by Alex, a catatonic mess. He does remember Alex stopping at the side of the long road leading to the mansion, reaching across him to open the door. Erik had promptly jumped into action then, crawling out of the car so that he can collapse to his hands and knees and retch, in the throes of a panic attack.

“We have to call Raven back,” Alex says tightly, his expression closed off and pale. He seems to be just barely holding himself together, coming apart at the seams. Erik feels about ten times worse than he looks. He hunches over, pressing his forehead to the grass with the smell of the dew slick grass permeating his nostrils, and remembers taking Charles to the hills behind the mansion back during their pre-Cuba days, pressing him into the grass and ignoring Charles’ rebuke that their clothes were going to get filthy. “And then we need to figure out where he’s been taken by Essex.”

“He could be anywhere by now,” Erik says hoarsely, sitting back up on his haunches and wiping at the thin stream of bile coating his chin. Stupid, stupid Charles, who’d looked at him with tears in his eyes, who’d told him he loved him and then left him. Maybe this is his penance for constantly leaving Charles, leaving him high and dry and coming back only because he’d had the audacity to attempt to raise a child with him. 

Leo. Leo, who’d grown so used to Charles’ presence and guidance. It hadn’t just been his life Charles had single handedly fucked by deciding to negotiate with Essex on his own. “Essex could have taken him anywhere.  _ Mein Gott,  _ what was he  _ thinking?  _ How could he be this- this much of an idiot?”

“I don’t know,” Alex sighs from behind, sounding aggrieved and upset. Erik coughs out once more and then straightens up. Here he’d been, falling to pieces when Alex arguably has more of a right to. He suddenly feels embarrassed for breaking apart in front of the boy he had helped to guide and then fought numerous times on the battlefield. “I didn’t- we didn’t realise. All I knew was that he was getting a little distant, but I never dreamed- I thought it was  _ you,  _ I just thought he was maybe struggling with handling your reappearance. How the hell did you find out what he was planning to do with Essex?”

“Charles told me,” Erik says, turning. He yet again swipes at the bile on his chin with the back of his wrist, and turns. Under the light streaming in from the lampposts he suddenly notices how Alex’s cheeks are tear-streaked, the skin so startlingly white it’s a surprise that the bone beneath isn’t visible. Not as well put together as he’d assumed, then. 

“You like to hold on to your rage,” Charles had told him once, over one of their phone calls. “You like to think you’re the only one allowed to feel anything.” Erik had scoffed at him then, quick to anger and rather proving his point for him.

“I was sleeping,” Erik continues, “and he came into my dreams, told me all about it.” 

Alex pales even more, if that had been at all possible. “He was planning this? He could have- he could have just  _ asked  _ for help. Or told me what was going on. Anything! Anything other than giving himself up!” He kicks at the tires of the car with his foot, running a hand roughly through his hair and looking as if he wanted to scream out all his tension into the world. At least someone other than him now acknowledged the infuriating man that was Charles Xavier- so intent on martyring himself without a second thought. 

“Have you ever known him to do that?” Erik demands. Charles is, if anything, fiercely independent. The slightest hint of help had always sent him running, even back in the pre-Cuba days when Erik would ask after Charles’ night terrors and Charles would manoeuvre the conversation away in a manner so effortless Erik’s left feeling vaguely run over by a bulldozer in its wake. 

“No, but we’re different now, we’re a  _ family  _ now,” Alex growls, and then huffs, storming over to the driver’s side of the car. “He has a fucking  _ son.  _ It’s different, Lehnsherr! In all the time that you were gone Charles-”

“Formed attachments,” Erik intervenes, shooting him a look and making him fall silent. He thinks of Charles in his study in that night that now feels so long ago, Leo dancing in his lap as he sang along to the radio. He thinks of Charles gently talking to Jean, taking her through using and exploring her telepathy. He thinks of Charles explaining game week to him, Charles with that poem shoved under his books, Charles’ quiet determination in finally facing Essex. Family, Erik had realised a long time ago, made you ready to do anything. Erik had been willing to kill. Charles had been willing to be killed. “He found people he’d do anything for. He’d gone and gotten stakes so high it’s led to this.”

“You can’t possibly blame us for this,” Alex says incredulously, but his eyes are resigned, a defeated air clinging to him now. Alex  _ would _ understand, a man who’d gotten thrown into solitary confinement because he’d asked for it. Sometimes, sacrificing yourself was simply- the easier route out. Charles should have grown out of it by now, but he hadn’t. 

Or maybe he had. Erik thinks again of Charles in his dream, slipping down from the armchair to cup his face with his hands, brown locks tumbling into his eyes.  _ I’m not afraid,  _ he’d said.  _ Find me.  _ That could have been Charles’ offered compromise, sacrificing himself and yet, asking Erik for help. A step too late, but Erik will take whatever that olive branch offers. 

“Get inside,” Erik says instead, sliding into the driver’s seat this time round. He feels steady, determination coursing through his veins.  _ I’m coming for you, Charles.  _ “We’re getting him back.”

  
  


*

**_Charles_ **

Charles looks at the outstretched hand and then turns over the words in his head. He swallows, trying his best to keep a laugh from bubbling out. 

Jesus, it was some sort of karmic justice. First Erik, on that beach with his hands supporting Charles, his mouth forming words Charles couldn’t register and his mind a wall to Charles, unbreachable.  _ I want you by my side. We’re brothers, you and I.  _ And then Essex, now, in front of him, mouth stretched in a grotesque smile and eyes searingly cold as his hand is stretched out.  _ Join my side, and we could be gods. _

Two extreme opposites, two sides of the coin, happening with a decade or so apart. One who’d distrusted him so much he’d actually resorted to putting on an article worn by the man who’d traumatised and spat on his childhood, and another one clearly so unhealthily obsessed with him that he’d like to do nothing more than carve out a space in Charles’ vulnerable, collared mind for himself and stay there. Charles feels like crying and laughing and screaming all in one. What were the chances? His telepathy, first scorned at and now revered. 

Maybe this was his penance for bringing it up to Erik- how the distrust and hatred of his ability made him feel. 

“Psychosis,” Charles says instead of voicing out his current mental issues, and Essex frowns. “Pardon me?”

“Maybe narcissism,” Charles continues, enjoying the way Essex suddenly looks wrong-footed, like the ground has shifted beneath his feet. Good, he thinks. He’d rolled over when it came to the safety of his school, of Erik and of Leo and somehow it had given Essex the impression that he was nothing more than a mouthpiece for others to manipulate. He’s done enough rolling over. “It certainly explains the delusions of grandeur, the thinking above your station.”

Essex’s expression clears and for the first time the entire day- or evening or night- he looks properly furious. Teeth bared, lips twisted in a snarl, eyes narrowed- Charles has yet again the insane urge to tell him Erik always did make anger look better. “I see,” he says, deceptively calm.

“No, I don’t think you do,” Charles replies, still keeping his tone pleasant. “You small, arrogant insect. _You,_ of all people, interrupt my routine, stalk me with the intention of recruiting me, manipulate me into thinking I’d been saving my school and my- well, my school, just to ask me to join you in some insane quest for power. You should have skipped all of it,  _ Nathaniel,  _ and just strolled up to my front door and told me the whole bloody spiel so I could then tell you to  _ fuck _ right off.”

Essex glares at him, clearly seething. For a second, Charles wonders if he’s going to invade his mind again, control him with all the finesse of a toddler.

“A pity we have come to this understanding,” Essex finally says, standing up. His eyes flash red, a clear warning. He stalks over and kneels in front of Charles. As pinned as Charles is to the table it makes the whole position feel rather awkward and everything in Charles screams at him to move, to get away. Charles glares at the man before him, making sure to project his intense dislike and hatred. “I had great hopes for you, Professor. Especially for someone of your… talent.”

“If you feel the need to mind rape me again,” Charles says flatly, “be my guest. It won’t change a single thing.” 

“Emma Frost was right when she said I’d have no luck with you,” Essex continues, and that makes Charles stop, a retort dying on his tongue. “You know Emma Frost, of course, don’t you? The White Queen- the telepath at Magneto’s side, during the Brotherhood’s glory years.”

How did Essex know her, that intimately? The last Charles had heard of Emma was when Erik had turned up on the front step of his mansion, half drunk and in the middle of a clear breakdown. It had been the middle of the night, and Charles had decided not to alert any of the X-Men to Erik’s presence. He’d instead taken Erik to his study, drawing Erik’s head onto his lap and combing through his hair. Erik had spent out all his tears, soaking through the cloth of his pajamas as Charles had soothed and shushed him, heart breaking for the very man he’d spent the last few years fighting. The grisly details of what had happened was spelt out for him later- the majestic Emma Frost, kidnapped by Trask’s men and dissected like an insect on a high school table, her autopsy report filched by Azazel. Erik had cried, and cried, and Charles had cried along with him, two men on opposite sides of the war grieving for the same woman. A week later, Charles had watched Kennedy’s assassination on the TV and cursed Erik’s name to the high heavens. 

Essex couldn’t have known her intimately. Not unless-

“You were working with Trask,” Charles whispers. The thought cleaves through him like betrayal. The concept of psionic supremacy, of somehow thinking telepaths deserved a place at the head of the table and more, had been unfathomable enough. But  _ this-  _ “How  _ could  _ you? Your own people, your own brothers and sisters, and you-”

“Why, Xavier,” Essex says, and snaps his fingers. Immediately the pillar to the left of them dissolves into a transparent wall, and Charles stares, horror stealing over him like quicksand. “How on earth did you think I could afford a facility as big as this? Kidnap you and prevent Magneto from staking me where I stood?”

It’s all kids. Clearly comatose kids, hooked up to tubes and IV drips, out for the count indefinitely. One of them is ashen, inches away from departing to her death. Another one has glassy eyes staring at the ceiling, clearly not moving at all. As Charles watches, his jaw ajar, a nurse moves into the room and draws the sheet over his head, shaking her head in clear remorse. 

“General Stryker has offered me the resources the likes of which only the government can offer,” Essex announces, a smirk on his face as he kneels there, watching the emotions play out on Charles’ face. “In return, I simply bring him what he wants- lab rats.”

“You monster,” Charles breathes. “You- you fucking lunatic- you think you’ll ever be forgiven by anyone for this? You’re a  _ fraud,  _ a fucking traitor to your people!” Dimly, he realises he sounds like Erik. Well, Erik had always operated from a place of logic as well. This- Charles feels his fists clench, his heart rabbiting against his ribcage. This is the very height of barbarism. 

Essex wasn’t only mad. Essex was cruel. This realisation strikes Charles at his core. It is then that he wonders at how much of a miscalculation it had been, to tackle Essex himself.

“A pity we couldn’t see eye to eye, Professor,” Essex says, almost kindly, drawing a syringe out of his pocket with one hand. He lays the other one on Charles’ lap. Charles is almost morbidly glad for his paralysis, in that moment. “Perhaps then I could have spared you the experience of being just another lab rat- again.”

When Essex jabs the syringe into his neck, Charles almost welcomes the dark that steals over him. 

*

**_Erik_ **

The second they enter the mansion, the kids are on them, crowding around them like bees gathered around honey. 

“Where’s the Professor?” Scott asks, craning his neck around Erik as if he thinks Erik’s hiding him like a wrapped present in the trunk of his car. Both Jean and Ororo are jumping up and down, asking after Charles and if they’re all okay now and if that’s a leaf stuck in Erik’s hair. Ilyana’s stomping her feet, features twisted in a scowl and Kurt’s biting his fingernails, looking especially worried. Erik draws a line when Hank enters the room with Leo in his arms, who takes one look at all the curious students and immediately bursts into tears. 

“Alright, all of you pipe  _ down!”  _ Erik barks. Amazingly enough the incessant chattering and questions stop, all the kids sitting down on the couch and staring up at him wide-eyed. He sighs, raising a hand to rub at the bridge of his nose where a headache is yet again, forming. Typical of Charles, to abandon him to this. 

“Hand him over,” he gestures to Hank, and Hank does, eyeing him warily. Once Leo’s in his arms he snuffles into Erik’s neck, clearly exhausted. Even his curls are lying down, lank and devoid of life, as if he’s caught onto something with his perception that the students have failed to realise. He rubs one tiny fist over his eyes, breathing still hitched like he could dissolve back into tears any second. “Papa?” Leo asks, his voice small and watery. “Papa where?”

He’s just a baby. His little  _ drachen,  _ not even two years old yet, and he’s going to have to deal with one half of his second set of parents going missing. Erik’s heart shatters all over again, as he closes his eyes shut tight, thinking again about how he’s going to have to tackle this. Charles would already have had a plan ready. Charles would have thought of everything but instead, he’s- 

Erik opens his eyes again, and sees everyone looking up at him intently, faces innocent and curious. He doesn’t know what to tell them, he realises. What do you tell someone, whose caretaker has just been taken by an evil they should never have to encounter, not in their entire lives? Never mind that he’d seen his mother die at an even younger age- he feels a strange protectiveness for these students as well. Charles had done this to them, put these downcast expressions on their faces to protect them from a greater evil and Erik can definitely acknowledge the importance of why- even if he refuses to agree with it. 

Erik swallows roughly, and goes down on his knees. 

“Charles kept some things from us, and gave himself up to protect you, all of you,” he says out loud, in a rush, hoping that none of the students actually start crying in front of him. Leo sniffling in his arms is already enough. “Summers, McCoy, Miss Raven and I will work at getting him back. But more importantly, all of you need to stay in school and keep studying hard. Make him proud for when we bring him home, yeah?”

Almost instantly, there are protests. Scott even jumps up, his face twisted in a scowl. “I want to  _ help _ find him!” He shouts, folding his arms. The rest are nodding furiously as well, and Ororo’s hands have started crackling, the sky outside turning grey. For the love of fuck, Erik thinks. 

_ “Quiet!”  _ Erik shouts again, and experiences an overwhelming sense of disbelief when yet again, the students comply. Alex stands off to the side, arms folded and a strange look in his eyes, surprisingly recalcitrant to offering help when Erik sends him a beseeching look. Fine, Erik thinks, gritting his teeth again. He turns to the students who are all still staring at him, some of them furious, yet others clearly terrified. 

“Your professor,” Erik says, trying his best to keep his voice level, “loved all of you and wanted to see you safe. He is in danger and I’m not going to put him in even more danger by letting a bunch of untrained mutants like you punks run off after him and get yourselves killed.” 

He doesn’t need to be a telepath to know what they’re feeling. Charles had been their role model, their father figure, their guide. He’d given them a home and a family, most of these kids who’d be lost and stranded without a school like this to hell them. And just like that, he’s gone. It’s more than a little jarring. If it were him, he’d want to run off too- use every weapon in his arsenal to hunt him down. In fact, every single cell in his body is already screaming at him to just do that already, save the man he loves and grab him away from the gaping jaws of the shapeless, ominous monster that is Essex Corp. 

But Erik can’t think like that now. He’s not on his own anymore, as much as he’d like to pretend otherwise. Charles chose him to communicate to about all of what he’d been planning to do, over Alex and Hank. Alex must have realised it, as cutting as such a realisation might have been. Charles has chosen  _ him  _ to look after the school and also bring him back. A near impossible task, but then again, Charles had always preferred to see the good in him- as opposed to the failures. 

Scott sniffles in front of him, anger gone from the lines of his body, and Erik snaps back out of his own mind. “All of you,” Erik says, scrubbing a hand over his face, “need to trust me to bring your professor back. I know it’s hard, considering-” he swallows, and looks at Alex who’s walked over to stand beside Hank, hand over his elbow. Alex gives him a nod of assent, imperceptible. It must be eating at Alex, to look at Erik take the reins like this. And yet, Alex doesn’t look like he’s about to take a hide out of Erik’s skin- instead, he looks almost impressed. 

“Considering you murdered a bunch of people on TV?” Jubilee asks blankly, and then yelps as Jean elbows her in the side. 

“Yes,” Erik answers dryly. “But can you see why this means I will be bringing him back? Nothing will stand in my way, I promise you. I will do everything,  _ everything  _ in my power to see him safe.”

Maybe Charles wouldn’t have wanted him to talk like this to his students, as if he was ready to conduct a massacre to get the man back, but if so he shouldn’t have left Erik in charge. Erik, of all people, who’d never been afraid to get blood on his hands to achieve what he wanted. 

“Okay, Mister Erik,” Scott says simply, swinging his legs on the couch. As if taking his lead, the rest of the students nod as well, acquiescing to Erik’s demands. Erik sits back on his haunches, letting out a sigh of relief he hopes doesn’t appear too obvious. 

“Okay,” Erik breathes. “Okay.” He suddenly realises he still has Leo in his arms when Leo pulls back from his neck to let out a wail, clearly still restless. “I- you all need to eat supper. Alex-”

“I’m ordering brownies,” Alex says, walking over to the phone. Normally a proclamation like that is followed by cheers, but for today there’s silence. Silence, and Leo who’s whining low in his throat, working up to a scream. 

“I’ll go for a walk,” Erik says. He doesn’t wait for a reply, almost running through the doors, out into the front yard and down the pebbled pavement where he remembers Charles and Hank used to run to help hone Hank’s abilities. 

How could Charles  _ do  _ this to him, he thinks, as he walks at a more leisurely pace, Leo now screaming in his ear. How could Charles expect him- any of them- to carry on? How could Charles rid him of the choice of at least protecting him from Essex? 

He knows why, of course. He’d brought Leo to Charles. He’d done this to them. If anyone is to blame-

“Hush, little  _ drachen,”  _ Erik murmurs, rocking Leo in his arms, carding his fingers through the hair at the back of Leo’s head. Leo cries even harder, if that is at all possible. His projecting is still a weak, trembling thing but Erik can feel it in his head, the constant stream of  _ papapapapapawantmypapa  _ injected directly into the lobes of his brain. “Quiet, now. Papa is-” Papa is hurt. Papa is missing. Papa may already be dead. Fuck, how do you explain to a barely two year old baby that his adopted father is just- gone? 

“I’ll get your Papa back,” Erik says desperately, as he walks briskly down the pavement. Leo’s crying starts to taper down, subdue itself as he runs on fumes. Charles would be much better than him at this. Charles has  _ proven  _ himself to be much better than him at this, often snatching Leo from his arms whenever he’s having a tantrum and soothing him back into comfortable silence. 

“It’s harder and easier with him,” Charles had said once, when Erik had managed to corner him during those few days when he’d been intent on giving him the cold shoulder. “He’s a telepath, so he’ll pick up on your moods. Keep your mind steady, soothe him, and he’ll calm down.”

“So why’s it harder?” Erik had asked.

Charles had grimaced, then. “Because you can’t just project a façade of a happy world for telepaths,” he says roughly. He’d looked exhausted then, exhausted and aged beyond his years. “They’ll grow up accustomed only to that. You have to ride out negative emotions with them. Shielding them helps, and I’ve helped install some rudimentary ones in Leo, but they need to learn to live in this world as well. Weather the storms, as they say.”

Appropriate for the situation they are in now, in fact. “You just need to weather the storm, little  _ drachen,”  _ he tells Leo, as Leo sniffles tiredly into his neck, his fingers grasping loosely at Erik’s collar. “At least until I bring your Papa home, and I  _ will  _ bring him home.” 

Anything else- anything else, Erik knows, is not an option. 

**Author's Note:**

> this story has been a pain to get out and im very happy to at least post it within this year. 
> 
> what essex does to charles (controlling his mind) is NOT the same as what charles did to erik in the last chapter of valley of kings. charles' mental touch was more gentle, he took care not to harm erik's own mind and he would have stopped his takeover at any second if erik had protested. in contrast, essex was rough and not at all gentle when he took over charles' mind, and of course he ignored charles' protests. i know essex's motivations seem murky in this beyond boo hoo i want to dominate the world but i promise it gets clearer in the next few chapters (i hope. rip.) 
> 
> anyway hope everyone liked this chapter! please leave a comment and/or kudos, it encourages me to write faster! as always talk to me on tumblr @ himbomcavoy or twitter @ ROBBIETURNCR i promise i dont bite <3


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